


Cadmus' Revenge

by lena-in-a-red-dress (CSIGurlie07)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, Near Death Experiences, Paranoia, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 11:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20257186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSIGurlie07/pseuds/lena-in-a-red-dress
Summary: After a year missing, Supergirl & Co find Lena in a Cadmus facility. They don't know what happened to her or what Cadmus wanted her for, but it doesn't matter because Lena is back and healthy. Right up until the moment she's not.((Please read the tags and decide accordingly. Not a character death.))





	Cadmus' Revenge

**Author's Note:**

> ## WARNING FOR THEMES OF SELF-HARM, SUICIDAL IDEATION, PARANOIA, NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE.

Cadmus is resurrected, and abducts Lena. She’s missing for over a year when they finally find her, in a facility packed with guards but devoid of any trace of Lillian. They find Lena pale and thin but alive in a small windowless cell. Down the hall and around the corner, they find a chilling lab, complete with a chair that looks like it belongs in a dentist’s office, if not for the manacles bolted to the arms and legs, and the macabre net of needled probes haloing the headrest.

Lena sleeps for days when they get her to the DEO. They clean the smears of blood from her forehead, examine her from head to toe, but when she wakes Lena is hale and whole and remarkably cogent. She doesn’t seem surprised by her rescue, and is neither scared nor thrilled to be back. 

She’s a little distant, but otherwise well-adjusted– unnervingly so. The Superfriends are all massively concerned, but Lena goes to therapy, she follows the doctors’ instructions, and they don’t want to make it worse so they just… let her be. 

Until the day that Kara walks into Lena’s L-Corp office as Supergirl, and finds her building a bomb. 

A big one.

“Is that…?”

“A bomb?” Lena replies coolly. “Yep. I’m surprised it took you this long.”

“Lena…”

“Don’t come any closer,” comes an off-hand warning, along with a head tilt towards a new arrangement of wall-mounted rail guns suddenly aimed at Kara. 

“Those are loaded with kryptonite bullets. Not sure if kryptonite is needed against a construct, but just in case you’re following the usual rules… even if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll hurt like hell.”

Kara swallows thickly. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know that this isn’t you. Step away from the desk, and we can talk about what’s going on with you, okay?”

“Nope. No more talking. No more interrogations, no more debriefing. No more scenarios.”

Scenarios? “Lena, what–”

“I’m a little surprised to be honest. You usually catch on to my escape attempts a lot sooner. But that was my mistake, wasn’t it? Escape." 

Finally, Lena straightens and turns, pressing a button that sets a countdown in red lights. 

"Tell me, mother,” Lena smirks, folding her arms against her chest. “Do you believe what they say about the Matrix?”

Kara doesn’t understand what’s going on, but she does understand that Lena is not well, and she understands that Lena is fully intent on blowing them both up. And the whole city block, if the size of the bomb and Lena’s acumen are any indication.

“Lena, please…”

Green eyes regard her coolly. “You really do look like her. Its the closest you come yet. Fitting that it’ll also be your last.”

“What do you mean?”

“Scorched earth. There’s nothing to reset if this explosion fries every neuron in my skull. So whatever you’re looking for, better ask now before I’m brain dead.”

“Lena–”

“Oh, and before you decide to blip out on me, I should probably mention that this room is equipped with an electromagnetic barrier. Again, not totally sure it works against what amounts to an online avatar, but I figured I might as well do my best to rid the world of both us Luthors.”

“I am not your mother…" 

"Obviously.”

Kara’s gaze flickers to the timer, ticking down. Less than twenty seconds.

“Lena, I am not Lillian, I am not here to hurt you, but I need you to let me get that bomb out of here–!”

“Ooh, the tears are a nice touch. For a heartless bitch I’m impressed–”

“I am not your mother!”

“You’re not Supergirl, either–”

Without thinking, Kara surges forward, pressing her lips against Lena’s. She can almost feel the surprised stutter of her heartbeat underneath the panicked roar in her own ears.

She pulls away, maintaining her grip on Lena’s face to stare deep into her eyes. Shocked green stares at her, her calm confidence flickering in confusion.

“Would your mother have done that?!”

Lena’s mouth works wordlessly, finally returning something human to her. Finally, she looks at the room around her as though seeing it for the first time. Too late.

The timer flickers from two seconds to one.

“LENA!”

She only has time to wrap her arms and her cape around Lena before the bomb detonates. The force of the shock wave throws them through the office wall, followed by a bellow of flame and debris.

Heat engulfs them both, swallowing them in a blazing inferno that seems to last hours. Kara’s entire focus narrows to funneling cold air from her lungs to the hollow of her cape, cooling the air within before the superheated gust could sear Lena’s lungs. 

For an interminable moment, her world is fire and ice, and the desperate, panicked prayer that when it abates, Lena’s heart will still be beating.

As soon as she can spare an ounce of focus she propels them both through the nearest window. The blaze chases at their heels, hungry for the oxygen accessible through the broken pane. Kara doesn’t stop. Not until she’s skidding against the floor of the DEO lobby, Lena cradled against her chest.

"Supergirl!” Alex calls, cutting through the blur of Kara’s shock. “We just got the alert about–”

She cuts off abruptly as Kara peels back her cape to reveal the bruised and ashen features of an unconscious Lena. Her hair is dry and singed, soot staining every inch of her, blackening the raw, weeping burns the cape couldn’t protect against.

Kara looks up at her sister, tears cutting twin tracks down her cheeks.

“Lena’s not okay.”

—

Lena wakes in the infirmary, bandaged, medicated, and under constant guard. Kara remains at her side, and straightens when she sees her friend’s eyes flutter open.

“Lena?”

At the sound of her voice, Lena’s eyes pinch shut. Gritting her teeth, her hands fist in the blankets.

"Are you in pain? Alex! Lena, it’s all right, you’re safe–”

“Shut up!” Lena cries. For the first time, something besides ready acceptance colors her voice– despair. “Just shut up! You’re not real. You’re not real!”

Kara stares, helpless. Alex materializes at her side, watching with wide eyes. 

“It should have worked, why didn’t it work… You’re not real. Not real…”

“Lena…”

_“You’re not real!”_

—

The chair, Brainy deduces, was a means to run a series of simulations. From the data he’s able to mine, Lena has spent most of her captivity in that chair, trapped in an ever evolving construct of her own mind, where it learned her patterns and expectations until it could render even the most realistic and intricate scenarios. 

For what purpose, they don’t know.

“Information, perhaps,” Brainy suggests, his anxiety betrayed by his habitual twisting of the Legion ring on his finger. “Something they anticipated Lena would only share with a familiar figure.”

“Or maybe to mine her intellect?” Alex theorizes. “If they had a problem, Lena would be the one to solve it.”

“Whatever the reason,” Kara concludes, her voice low, “Lena caught on. She learned to doubt everything she saw. Us included.”

“So how do we snap her out of it?” Nia asks. 

They all exchange glances, hoping another has an answer.

None of them do.

—

Reason gets them nowhere. 

Footage of Lena’s discovery and rescue is met with disinterest. Detailing the ongoing search for Cadmus and her mother puts Lena to sleep.

They take her to L-Corp to show her the aftermath of her bomb. Thankfully, they’d been the only ones in the building, but the damage was substantial even weeks later, and it seems that none of the prior simulations ever displayed such continuity. For a moment, her mask cracks.

They try to capitalize on their opportunity by immediately following up with a game night. Lena loses soundly, seemingly another distinct change. Lena’s features soften further, enough for the tiniest of smiles to creep over her, and for a moment they can believe that they’ve finally gotten through. 

Twenty minutes later, Alex finds Lena in Kara’s bathroom, carving a long, deep line into her forearm with a razor.

Chaos reigns, and a hopeless fear creeps into Kara’s heart as she cradles Lena in her lap. Alex wraps a hand towel tightly around the wound, lifting it above Lena’s head while Brainy notifies the DEO.

“Lena… please,” Kara whispers. “I don’t know how to help you. Tell me what I need to do.”

Hazy green eyes gaze up at her.

“Let me go…”

“No, Lena–”

“Please, Mom…” Lena’s voice cracks. A tear squeezes from the corner of her eye, coursing down her temple to pool against Kara’s hand. “Let me go.”

It’s worse than the moments before the bomb went off. This time, it isn’t a triumph of spite.

This time, it’s surrender.

—

It’s a surrender none of them accept. 

When Lena is stitched up and resting under sedation in the infirmary of the DEO, the rest of them gather to discuss a new plan of action.

“There is likely no way to convince Lena that this is the true physical world,” Brainy delivers crisply. “The nature of the machine allows it to perfect mimic the world she expects to see, but any aberration to that effect is merely a glitch, or an instance of learning.”

Alex shakes her head, hands propped on her hips. “I refuse to believe there’s nothing we can do. There must be something we’re missing.”

Silence stretches between them, until Kara rocks back in her seat. 

“If we can’t convince her out here, maybe we can convince her in there.”

Nia blinks. “In… where?”

Turning to Brainy, Kara takes a deep breath. “Brainy, you’ve found mind-palaces for both me and James. Do you think you could find Lena’s?”

“You think we might connect with her there,” James fills in. “Like Kelly did with me.”

Kara shrugs. “It’s worth a shot.”

“It would be exceedingly difficult,” Brainy warns. “Even before this recent trauma, Lena has relied heavily on compartmentalization, which I now know is not a healthy mode by which to operate. Her mind is bound to be in chaos– if there are any boxes left, it may be wise to leave them unopened.”

“Could you build a new one?” Alex asks. 

Nia shakes her head. “Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?”

_“I don’t know what else we can do!”_ Kara snaps. “I am not going to just sit here and watch her kill herself! I won’t! We–” Her voice cracks. “We just got her back…”

The others stare at her in stunned silence. Kara swallows her rising sobs, and looks omce more to Brainy.

Brainy shifts uncomfortably.

“I will try.”

—

It takes days, but with Nia’s help, Brainy succeeds. He finds the one quiet corner of Lena’s mind, and with the aid of Nia’s psychic powers manages to tethers Lena’s consciousness to it. The moment he gives the signal, Kara puts white diode to her forehead and closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, she finds herself standing on the rocky shore of a wide flat lake, the water so still it turns the surface to mirrored glass.

On the shore stands a familiar figure, looking out across the water with an air of peaceful serenity.

“Lena?”

Lena turns, and when she lays eyes on Kara her features spread into a soft, sweet smile. “Kara…”

The next thing Kara knows, she’s wrapped up in all she remembers Lena to be– her warmth; the smell of her shampoo; the press of broad hands against her back, pulling her close. 

“I’ve missed you,” Lena murmurs. Kara hiccups a sob, half of a laugh. If only Lena knew… “But I think I’ve finally done it. It worked.”

Kara’s purpose catches up to her like a knife to the heart. She grips Lena tighter. 

“You’re not dead, Lena.”

Lena pulls back, resting her hands on Kara’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” she says calmly. “It means it’s finally over.”

“No, Lena. We saved your life. This place isn’t real, Brainy made it so we could talk to you.”

Kara braces for Lena’s reaction, but it comes in the form of lines crinkling at the corners of Lena’s eyes. 

“It is real. Real enough, at least.” She turns to look out across the water. Though she pulls out of Kara’s embrace to do so, their fingers lace together in a gentle grip. “My mother died here.”

Kara’s heart pounds against her ribs. This isn’t a construct of Brainy’s design. It was something else. 

Lena turns to look at her, giving their joined hands a squeeze. “I’m glad I got to see you again.”

Absurdly, Kara’s reminded of The Deathly Hallows, and Dumbledore’s final scene in a quiet, sterile version of Kings Cross Station. That’s what this place feels like: a waystation. A platform to say goodbye.

“No.”

Her voice cuts through the quiet, sharp and incisive. She pulls Lena back around to face her, and gets a startled pair of green eyes staring back.

“Four months ago, we found you and rescued you from a Cadmus facility. In that same facility, we found a chair.”

Alarm sharpens Lena’s gaze. She tries to pull free, but Kara tightens her grip. “No, no, I won’t–”

“You’re not there anymore,” Kara promises, rubbing her thumbs against Lena’s hands in comfort. “We brought you home. We thought you were fine, but– six weeks ago, you built a bomb in your office. And then you tried to stop eating. And then…”

“Stop,” Lena said. “Let me go–”

“I don’t know what Lillian wanted from you–”

_“LET ME GO!”_

Lena tore free, stumbling backwards from the force of it. Suddenly, the placid aura of the lake shattered with the sharp, heaving sobs of Lena sitting among the rocks, hands pressed tight to either side of her head. 

“It wasn’t enough… it’s never enough! Why won’t you let me go?! Please! Please just let me go…”

Kara sits on the pebbled beach in front of Lena. When she reaches for Lena, it’s to place one hand on a pale ankle, exposed by a denim cuff. 

“I don’t know what she wanted from you,” Kara says again, more gently. “And I’m not going to ask.”

Rocking, hands pressed tight to her head, Lena says nothing.

“I don’t know how to convince you the real world is out there,” Kara continues. “I don’t know if I can. Maybe… maybe you just have to choose to believe that it is.”

“I won’t give you anything–”

“The only thing we’re asking for is _you,_ Lena.”

Lena opens her eyes, meeting Kara’s gaze for a brief moment before the anguish returns, and Lena rocks backwards once more, breath quickening with anxiety as her features pinch in distress.

“We won’t ask you any questions except what you want to have for lunch,” Kara continues, desperate, “or what movie you want to watch on Friday night. We don’t even have to stay in National City. We can go up to the mountains– find you a lake just like this one, where no one can find you.”

Lena stills. Her eyes stay closed, her body continues to tremble, but the rocking stops, and Kara hears the steadying breath that cuts through it all.

When Lena makes no move to speak, Kara tries one last time.

“I know it won’t be easy. I know how tempting it is to just let go. And I know I can’t stop you.” Her hand firms on Lena’s ankle. “This is your crossroads, Lena. Whatever happens next, you have to choose. All I’m asking, right here, right now, is that you choose us.”

Kara’s breath catches in her chest. 

“All I’m asking is for one more day with you. So that tomorrow I can have one more chance to ask you to stay. However many times it takes.”

Lena sags, exhaling into a sob. She reaches for Kara’s hand. 

“I’m so tired, Kara,” she whispers.

Nodding, Kara blinks back her tears. “I know… I know.”

They sit together for long minutes, until Kara senses that her time here is down. Whatever happens next, comes from Lena, and no one else. 

“If you do choose to let go,” she croaks. “Please know how sorry I am that I didn’t find you sooner. And know that we don’t blame you. We love you, and we’ll miss you every day.”

With a final squeeze, Kara climbs to her feet, letting Lena’s hand slip from her fingers.

“Kara–!”

“I love you, Lena. With all my heart.”

Kara blinks open to the sight of the med bay ceiling, and the weight of Alex’s hand in hers. 

“Kara?”

Brainy and Nia both exhale, turning to face her.

“It worked,” Kara croaks. She pulls the sensor from her forehead and sits up, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks. “I saw her.”

“What happened? Did she believe you–?”

“She needs to choose,” is all Kara can say. “She has to choose.”

Together, they wait.

—

Kara stays at Lena’s bedside as she sleeps, long after the sedative wears off. As the minutes and hours tick by, Kara waits for the ever growing expectation that the only change in Lena’s condition will be the flatline of the heart monitor.

Which is why she jumps a foot in the air when Lena’s hand tightens on hers, well into the next morning. 

“Lena?" 

The room wakes around them: Nia bolts upright from where she’d slumped against Brainy’s shoulder; Alex pushes off the wall, crossing towards the bed; James jolts awake, blinking and bleary-eyed.

Lena flinches when her eyes open to find shadows looming over her, as her heart monitor jumps alarmingly. Kara motions them back with her free hand, the other still locked around Lena’s.

"Lena, can you hear me?”

After a long moment, Lena manages to turn her head, focusing a blurry gaze on Kara.

“Kara…?”

“It’s me.” Kara coughs out a smile. “It’s us.”

Lena blinks sluggishly against the hairs sticking to her forehead with sweat, jutting out over her eyes. Kara reaches up to smooth them away, then lets her hand linger against Lena’s skin. Lena breathes softly, turning her face into Kara’s touch. 

_“I choose you.”_


End file.
